Stakeholders responses to the Camdessus Report

The "Financing Water for All" report stated that financial flows to the water sector need to at least double, and need to come from financial markets, from water authorities themselves through tariffs, from multilateral financial institutions (MFIs), from governments, and from public development aid paralel to a reform of the water sector governance.

The report came out with recommendations to improve water sector financing and adressed all stakeholders.

If the recommendations were maybe to recent to be perceived in depth during the World Water Forum in Kyoto, 2003, they started soon permeating the international community during the following months.

The Development Committee in its Communique for its 2003 Spring meeting in Dubai noted "the recent report of the Panel on Financing Water Infrastructure, and asked the World Bank to consider before its next meeting how it can implement relevant recommendations of the Panel report".

The G8 summit in Evian adopted a G8 Water Action Plan, which closely follows the Panel recommendations and called the World Bank "in consultation with other MFIs to study and recommend necessary measures to implement the following proposals made by the World Panel on Financing Water Infrastructure: using financing instruments in a more flexible manner to allow loans directly to sub-sovereign bodies, where appropriate; developing guarantee and insurance schemes for risk mitigation; and addressing the issue of sovereign and foreign exchange risk coverage".

In response to the Panel recommendations and the following request of the G8, the World Bank Group begun a series of initiatives designed to investigate and possibly resolve some of most persistent financing problems in the water sector.

The Asian Development Bank (AsDB) actively participated in the Panel and generally supports the Panel recommendations, which are broadly consistent with its water policy. AsDB committed to help implement these recommendations and issued the Response of the Asian Development Bank to the Report of the World Panel on Financing Water Infrastructure in January 2004. This response is intended to situate the AsDB's water-related work in the context of the Camdessus Report and to provide stakeholders with AsDB's perspectives and key issues.